


The Scottish Patient

by wishwellingtons



Category: Thick of It (UK)
Genre: British Comedy, M/M, Sickfic, manflu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 04:10:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishwellingtons/pseuds/wishwellingtons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I wish you’d just let me give you a fucking whisky, it’s whisky that’d sort you out.”</p><p>Malcolm Tucker has flu. Jamie Macdonald is going to kill him with kindness ("light" comedy; no warnings except for swearing and, er, references to assisted suicide).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Scottish Patient

“Sam,” Malcolm rasps, down the phone – he resembles nothing so much as a series of sound effects from a BBC documentary about the plague (starring Anton Lesser and voiced by Simon-fucking-Schama), “you’ve got to fucking help me. The Angel of Fucking Death just tried to top me with Lemsip,” Sam briefly removes the phone from her ear as the background Scottish shouting gets too much, “and I want out. D’you think you could call Switzerland?” He sounds pitiful. Nevertheless, a few moments later he reaches a volume that’s surprisingly impressive – Jamie’s just overcome a childproof cap through the simple expedient of bashing it against the wall, and now there are Ibuprofen all over Malcolm’s brightly polished floors.   
  
“I wish you’d just let me give you a fucking whisky, it’s whisky that’d sort you out.”  
  
“Oh, aye, a fucking Glasgow drowning, that’s what’s made your Motherwell the fuckin’ health resort it is today, instead of the fuckin’ tubercular slumhole it’s so inexplicably – inexplic –“ He starts coughing. It seems to be lumbar, if not bronchial, as fifty years of slime, urban hardship and asthma rattle their way up from the bottom of Malcolm’s lungs. Jamie is next to him in a second, rubbing his back in a way that’s brutal but also notably efficient. Malcolm hacks up into another wad of tissue Jamie stuffs in front of his face (Jesus, this is disgusting, why doesn’t _Jamie_ find it disgusting? The fact that Jamie’s had three kids should occur to Malcolm, but it doesn’t – and just as well, because if he thought Jamie were treating him like a _wean_ \- ) and sits, shivering, while Jamie disposes of the evidence and hugs him, chin on Malcolm’s shoulder.  
  
“I fucking mean it,” he croaks, pitifully. “Another day of this and I want Dignitas.” He’s glistening and feverish and Jamie completely ignores him.   
  
“Lie back down.”  
  
“ – like fuckin’ Nurse Ratched with bollocks,” he wheezes, mystifying Jamie who has never knowingly read a book since school (apart from those that concern JOLSON). Jamie drops a kiss on his forehead (earning horror and disgust, then a barely perceptible squeeze of his hand), and retreats.  
  
“I’ll bring you some soup.” Malcolm moans aloud at the horror which Jamie is probably perpetrating in his kitchen. The one time Jamie tried to cook them steak, despite it arriving pre-cut, trimmed and seasoned from the butchers, the end result had been as if the steaks had been live fish, which Jamie had had to chase round the kitchen in order to kill. Now, he’s only got to open a box of New Covent Garden broth, but Malcolm can imagine his cabinets looking as if Jamie just disemboweled a chicken. He snatches at his phone.   
  
“Sam,” he whispers, “this is fucking siege mentality. This is being catered by Attila in a Celtic hoodie and chef’s whites - _my_ chef’s whites. I am fuckin’ begging you, find the nuclear button and press it, _anything_ , only get me back to the office.”  
  
“The doctor’s orders were quite clear, Malcolm,” begins Sam, but her boss breaks in with what sounds like the last howl of a something crazed and vulpine that’s dying up on a mountain.  
  
“SAM, he is _in my kitchen_ , he is in my _face_ and no doctor on sweet God’s earth – except for some fucker employed by Steve Fleming, you did _vet_ the grasping bastard?” Sam lets this insult pass without comment, employing a superior silence on grounds of Malcolm’s ill health. “No doctor,” Malcolm resumes, hoarse and mad about the vowels, “would expect me to recover – would expect me to fuckin’ _live_ with this psycho in the house. He didnae say I had to go through this.”

“Has Jamie offered you a whisky, Malcolm?”   
  
“Are you in fucking cahoots now, is that it? Jesus Christ. Have you seen that man measure alcohol? It’s not flu, I have got a cold, fuckin’ _make him leave me alone._ \- ” A bout of coughing more usually associated with the fifth acts of Irish tragedies interrupts the conversation. To her relief, Sam hears Jamie return, intercept Malcolm’s attempt to cough up a lung, and settle him. The murmurs of their conversation, she does her best to ignore (she is very good at this, separated from Malcolm’s office only by a thin wall). After a minute, he picks up the phone.  
“Jamie.”  
  
“Samantha.” He is sounding unnaturally pleased with himself, voice savage with suppressed glee. She hears Malcolm’s coughing (and complaining) fade – Jamie is walking away.  
  
“What have you done.”  
  
“I am,” he says firmly, “a fucking genius.”  
  
“Did you give him alcohol, Jamie?”  
  
“No,” says Jamie, barely able to contain his delight. “I gave him soup. A fucking _flagon_ of soup.”  
  
Sam takes a very deep breath. “Did you spike Malcolm’s soup, Jamie?”  
  
“Aye,” says Jamie, with the beatific breath of one who has done a righteous act. “Elephants have been felled with less. He’ll sleep all fuckin’ afternoon, and maybe when he wakes up, the auld fucker won’t sound so much like the spare parts catalogue for a fucking Austin 500. So I won’t have to break his fucking head or call your wee chest-quack again.” Jamie glances back towards Malcolm, already beginning to doze. At least, that’s what Sam assumes he does; she hears the warmth come into his voice. “Puir auld fuck.” Jamie makes it sound like “fucking love of my _life_ ”, which – well, Sam does _not_ want to dwell.  
  
After he’s hung up, Jamie goes back to Malcolm and gently disengages bowl from hand, mug from lap. Malcolm leans groggily against him, still rasping out a heavy – but noticeably freer – passel of threats.  
  
“You’ve drugged me, you cunt.”  
  
“Aye.”  
  
“I’m going to rip off your balls and reinstate them in your eye sockets.”  
  
“Mm.”  
  
“I will fucking bury you so deep that wild things shit hundreds of feet above your head. Your sorry fucking end will be whispered by things in caves as a warning to their young. Don’t stroke my hair.”  
  
“Go to sleep, Malc.” Jamie presses his lips to the back – the very slightly balding back – of Malcolm’s fragile skull. He smells like expensive shampoo, plain soap, and lemon.  
  
“Oh god, my kitchen.” It’s practically a sob, but Jamie feels his gaunt body _give in_ \- a relaxing of the thin muscles and aching joints, as their owner – Malcolm Tucker, all-powerful master of the universe (Jamie loyally supplies) – rests in against the diminutive psycho at his side. “I will destroy you.”  
  
“I’ll call Yolande, she’ll come and fucking clean it.”  
  
“You fuck…” Malcolm begins, but doesn’t finish it. Head on Jamie’s shoulder, inflamed cheek close to Jamie’s neck, Malcolm Tucker is asleep. His grip on his Blackberry doesn't relax for a second.  
  
Jamie is incredibly fucking relieved. He’s broken Malcolm’s soup dish and it’s going to take the Conran Shop fucking _hours_ to deliver.


End file.
